|
|
Double Whammy
Grime & Aaron Cain Team Up
By Guy Aitchison |
My left arm was a mess, like a moldy loaf of French bread. It was covered
with my teenage tattoos; hand-poked, fixed, covered up, fixed again and
finally abandoned in frustration. Day after day I put tattoos on clients
that I would gladly have traded for the mess I was living with. The time
eventually came when I had both the resources and the motivation to begin
lightening this old junk with a laser with the goal of one day re-tattooing
my arm with something I could be excited about. Arms are, after all, our
most prime real estate - most visible to the world, and more importantly,
always in our own line of sight.
Laser treatments can be a real test on your pain tolerance. The laser feels
something like a pan of hot bacon grease spitting drops of sizzling goo on
your skin, several times per second, over and over again in an agonizing
rythym that makes getting tattooed feel like a nice massage by comparison.
To make things a little easier I used Emla, a pre-numbing cream that is
applied two hours prior to the session, wrapped in cellophane, and then
cleaned off before starting. This is an effective means of killing pain for
20-45 minutes, which makes it helpful for laser treatments but of
questionable value for tattooing.
In addition to this, I used ice to chill the skin right before the laser hit
it, numbing it the rest of the way. We would begin the session at the top of
my arm and move gradually downward, staying a step ahead of the laser with
the ice pack and following it with another ice pack, which cools the skin
back down so it won't boil in its own juices, minimizing trauma. The whole
ordeal was a lesson in pain management. I have to extend my compliments to
our dermatologist, Dr. Michael Bond in Memphis TN, who is a patient,
pro-tattoo guy that gives you chocolate and is all about pain management.
He's worth looking up if you're in the midwest.
Fast-forward six years. Aaron Cain is having a Budweiser and we're
sketching, waiting to see what's taking Grime so long. It's February and
there's freezing rain falling out of the sky. Getting these two guys to
commit to traveling out here at the same time took some doing - two years of
persuasion, to be accurate - but the week has arrived and I'm stoked. I'm
just hoping the damn plane doesn't get rerouted to Albuquerque or someplace.
Finally the phone rings; he's in St. Loius but the connecting flight to our
little rural podunk one-strip airport is cancelled until tomorrow. We
discuss options and finally find him a one-way car rental the rest of the
way here. Good enough.
Neither Aaron nor Grime need any introduction here. I have known Aaron for
most of my career and have always admired his work. We have collaborated on
numerous different projects throughout the years and have no doubt had a bit
of influence on each other. I carry a fair amount of his work in my
collection, but it's all below the belt. I have always wanted a large,
flowing free-form abstract design on my arm, and Aaron is one of the
torch-carriers when it comes to these types of designs.
Grime has been in the game almost as long as Aaron and has made his
reputation by being both versatile and suprising. There are no two pieces in
his portfolio that come from exactly the same place. He is a dedicated
painter and works in many different media with equal fluency; this has given
his tattooing a unique blend of strong graphic power and painterly texture.
My hopes for this project were to bring together all of these sensibilities,
along with Aaron's, into a single piece of art.
Several months prior to their arrival, I emailed them a photo of the naked
arm and a rough sketch. I asked them to look at the sketch
for a moment, absorb the parts they liked, then put it away. I meant only to
give a general sense of the flow and dimensional effect I wanted, especially
the blade-like thing on the forearm. Once we were all in the same room, we
printed up a couple dozen copies of the naked arm photos on typing paper and
proceeded to make a bunch of different sketches. These were done
quickly, with no intention of coming up with anything final. All three of us
did this, and compared notes the whole time as we went. This happened for a
couple days in between other things, such as Grime tattooing a friend of
ours and Aaron and I doing a sculpture, so we had a few days to reflect on
the sketches and create new variations. Finally, we laid them all out like a
deck of cards and started drawing purple arrows pointing to the
parts we liked. No single sketch had the winning combination, but the
collection of them gave us a whole library of bits and pieces to combine
into something we could all be happy with.
The next step was to draw on the arm, but not for the purpose of tattooing.
After narrowing down the sketches, Grime and Aaron drew a simple version of
the final design on my arm with a light green marker, just to get the basic
flow and placement right. This involved a lot of erasing and fine tuning,
but no detail or refinement. When the drawing began to look like the basics
were as they needed to be, we took photos and made a big print of them, big
enough to fill a 20" x30" pad of tracing paper. We laid a sheet of
tracing paper over this, sketched in the basic shapes from the marker
drawing, then laid another sheet over this and began working out details,
with all three of us combining our efforts. For the later stages of
this drawing, I hung back, trying not to get so involved as to cramp
anyone's style.
The final pencil drawing contained enough information that there was no
question about the basic layout and use of dark and light. This
allowed them to proceed with the tattoo without having to constantly ask
each other questions about basic relationships in the design.
Finally the big day arrived. I continued to play the same game with myself
that I had ever since they had booked their tickets a month or so prior-
that this was an exciting tattoo project I was working on with a couple
friends. The thought that it was actually going on me was kept deliberately
out of my forebrain. Such thoughts aren't always helpful, after all. So I
managed to stay calm as they drew on me, this time for keeps. Like
before, they began with a light green marker, which is dark enough to see
but light enough that scribbling won't make the final drawing look messy. When this started to look right, they switched to magenta markers
and re-drew the whole thing, this time without scribbling, creating
a clean, readable line drawing on my arm. This light-to-dark
strategy is very effective when drawing on skin with markers.
Needless to say, Aaron packs a lot of machines. He actually shipped a box of
them to himself so he wouldn't have to bring them on the plane. He then
proceeded to crack open the box and hand them out like wierd alien cookies.
Many of them were new designs, fresh off the press. Some of them were
designs that Grime had created the original wax mold for. All of them are
beautiful, smooth-hitting tattoo machines. They set up ten of them, just for
good measure.
I could no longer pretend this was going on someone else, so I got in the
chair. I have sat for many hours of tattooing in my lifetime, but never from
two artists at once. Considering how many times I've teamed up with other
artists and wailed on people with two machines at the same time, it was high
time I experienced it for myself. Grime began by lining the whole thing with
a tight three using grey wash, which took less than an hour. This
was enough of a warmup. By this point Aaron was feeling left out, so I could
no longer postpone the inevitable. Before I knew it, two machines were
hitting my skin at the same time.
Some folks have complained that the multiple machine thing is just
unbearable, twice as bad as just one. Others have commented that having two
machines going at once makes it hard to focus on the point where the pain is
happening, making it more of a general feeling of discomfort as opposed to a
pinpoint of agony. I found this to be the case, thankfully. Yes, it was
brutal at times, but the double action seemed to spread the pain out and
keep it at bay. Plus, there is definitely a good feeling knowing that twice
as much is getting accomplished as usual.
Throughout the process, the discussion continued, sometimes involving my
input, sometimes not. Since all of the basics had been established
in the drawing, this was the time to work out the details and subleties.
Much of this was allowed to happen on its own, like any tattoo, but the fact
that we were all involved in the thinking process made it inviting to bounce
ideas off each other, even small things like textures and nuances of color.
This added to the richness of the piece.
They worked in small areas, bringing them to completion before moving to the
next region. This made the process more bearable for me, since jumping
around from place to place can be far more annoying than taking areas to
completion before moving on. This also made it possible to work a second
day, since the greyline was so light that it could be worked over the second
day without trauma, and by day 2 there were many areas that were totally
untouched except for the greyline.
Each area was worked by both artists in an effort to keep the overall look
consistent. First the major outlines in each zone were built up and the
black shading added, then the color brought about halfway there. At
that point they would swap seats and finish what each other had started.
Occasionally one or the other artist would rest for a few minutes while the
other worked, but for a good eighty percent of the piece, I had two
machines striking me at once.
This was not only a chance for me to get a great tattoo, but a rare
opportunity for Aaron and Grime to try out machines and setups that they
would otherwise never try. Years ago, when Aaron came out to our
place to swap tattoos, we collaborated on a sleeve on a local artist and had
a chance to work extensively with each other's equipment. I changed many
things about how I work as a result of that week, including the amount of
needle I have hanging out, how I find that 'sweet spot' on the rheostat
where the machine hits with just enough power for my rythym, even how I lay
out my ink caps. I can't speak for either artist in terms of what they may
have changed about how they work, but no doubt the experience at the very
least gave them both many small technical details to think about. This is
just one of the many great things about artistic collaboration.
For most of the session, they kept me laid out on a massage table. This made
it easier for them to both work at once, with the arm extended horizontally. This also made the sitting easier for me, since a tattoo is always
easier to endure when the position you're in doesn't require any effort to
maintain. This was especially helpful towards the end of the second day,
when I had accrued a total of close to 40 hours of tattooing in two days
(that's 20 hours times two artists). As much as I wanted the piece as fully
realized as possible, I was getting close to my limit.
From the beginning, my goal had been to finish the piece. I wanted them to
reach the point where they were both looking at the piece, wiping off the
last of the ink and blood, and agreeing together that it was done. I didn't
want to be the one to stop the session. And I tried, I really tried. But by
the end of it, if either of them had tried to poke me with one more needle,
I might have said something rude and unpleasant. Besides, it was done, and I
think they were just doing that whole wierd tattoo psychology thing where the
artist announces that the piece is finished, the client starts to stand up
to take a look, and the artist says, "wait- just one more highlight". I've
done this enough times to others, but when they did it to me, it wasn't
funny.
Needless to say, I am delighted with my tattoo. It is exactly the
kind of thing that I have always wanted on my arm, and compared to what I
had there before, it is just hard to believe. It does bear some resemblance
to the vague picture I had in my head before starting, but it is so much
more alive, rich, detailed and energetic than I could have ever anticipated.
It feels like a reward for dealing patiently with all of those years of
having work I was unhappy with, followed by years of lasering; these ordeals
helped to shape the artist that I am. And frankly, I feel that I have most
decidedly earned the right to have a tattoo I am happy with.
For those of you that feel your tattoo collection is less than you deserve,
there is hope. Laser treatments are not a magic wand for solving your tattoo
problems, but can be helpful in the long process of reversing your mistakes
and redeeming your bodysuit. If you approach the whole process with patience
and keep a clear vision in your head of what you want, you will eventually
find a way of making it happen.
If you choose to get a collaborative tattoo, be sure to find a pair of
artists who are open minded and work well together. The most successful
collaborations are the ones where there is a good deal of discussion and
preparatory work, so both artists can display their strengths without
cancelling each other out. Approached the right way, it can not only provide
a rewarding tattoo experience, but can send both artists home with all kinds
of new things to think about.
|
|
|
|
